Chapter 6

Carl and Donut arrive on the eighth floor in El Capitolio Nacional in Havana, Cuba. The floor's theme is "The Ghosts of Earth," a two-week phase where crawlers must explore replicas of real Earth locations and recruit squad members by capturing folklore-based monsters with flags, transforming them into T'Ghee totems.

Carl and Donut enter the eighth floor in El Capitolio Nacional in Havana, Cuba, discovering they are the only ones in the marble rotunda. Donut reveals she chose Cuba because she suspected the Book of Bahamas given to them was a trap to separate them from the party—she has dropped from rank one to rank two on the leaderboard. As they explore locked doors and dark windows showing swirling black smoke, Donut chooses her new class with Mordecai's guidance, selecting Master Telephone Psychic over Agony Urchin, gaining new spells including Brain Freeze, Bad Attitude, and Why Are You Hitting Yourself. Other squad members check in from different locations: Imani and Elle in the western United States at Great Wolf Lodge, Katia in Iceland, Li Na in Beijing's Galaxy Soho building with hundreds of crawlers, and Florin in Ecuador. Prepotente has separated from the group and is in the Bahamas. Cascadia delivers a lengthy announcement detailing the floor mechanics. The eighth floor is a recreation of Earth from a specific date with 293 regions containing over 38,000 crawlers. Crawlers must spend fourteen days in locked starting areas with their squads, which cannot exceed five members and have six extra slots that must be filled. Outside awaits a replica of Earth where non-biological entities (buildings, vehicles, objects) are tangible but biological entities are intangible ghosts from the recording. Crawlers must capture region-specific folklore monsters using flags, which transform defeated creatures into T'Ghee totems that become squad minions. After phase one, crawlers must fight to an exit key in a new location during phase two. Carl realizes this is designed like Pokémon catching and worries the planners will engineer a scenario forcing him to watch Miss Beatrice with another person during phase two, as they knew about the Bahamas book. Prepotente contacts Donut from the Bahamas, asking Carl to read the lore book; Carl offers him half his Size-Up potions in exchange. A new door appears in the rotunda leading to their personal saferoom.